Antibiotic resistance has become a great challenge all over the world. Gram-negative bacteria present a major threat to human life and medicine, with almost no antibiotics left for treatment making it urgent to find new principles and mechanisms. A concerted focus since the 1990s on tackling rising multidrug-resistant (MDR) Gram-positive bacteria within US and European healthcare systems appears to have been instrumental in stimulating the relatively large numbers of products targeting Gram-positive bacteria in recent years. The emergence of MDR Gram-negative bacteria presents a great threat to human life and is a challenge for modern medicine.